The Sun of Quebec: A Story of a Great Crisis

by Joseph A. Altsheler

But in spite of reading and action, time dragged heavily. The old loneliness and desolation would return and they were hard to dispel. He could not keep from crying aloud at the cruelty of fate. He was young, so vital, so intensely alive, so anxious to be in the middle of things, that it was torture to be held there. Yet he was absolutely helpless. It would be folly to attempt escape in the little dinghy, and he must wait until a ship came. He would spend hours every day on the highest hill, watching the horizon through his glasses for a ship, and then, bitter with disappointment, he would refuse to look again for a long time.

Whether his mind was up or down its essential healthiness and sanity held true. He always came back to the normal. Had he sought purposely to divest himself of hope he could not have done it. The ship was coming. Its coming was as certain as the rolling in of the tide, only one had to wait longer for it.

Yet time passed, and there was no sign of a sail on the horizon. His island was as lonely as if it were in the South Seas instead of the Atlantic. He began to suspect that it was not really a member of any group, but was a far flung outpost visited but rarely. Perhaps the war and its doubling the usual dangers of the sea would keep a ship of any kind whatever from visiting it. He refused to let the thought remain with him, suppressing it resolutely, and insisting to himself that such a pleasant little island was bound to have callers some time or other, some day.

But the weeks dragged by, and he was absolutely alone in his world. He had acquired so many stores from the schooner that life was comfortable. It even had a touch of luxury, and the struggle for existence was far from consuming all his hours. He found himself as time went on driven more and more upon his books, and he read them, as few have ever read anything, trying to penetrate everything and to draw from them the best lessons.

As a student, in a very real sense of the term, Robert became more reconciled to his isolation. His mind was broadening and deepening, and he felt that it was so. Many things that had before seemed a puzzle to him now became plain. He was compelled, despite his youth, to meditate upon life, and he resolved that when he took up its thread again among his kind he would put his new knowledge to the best of uses.

He noted a growth of the body as well as of the mind. An abundant and varied diet and plenty of rest gave him a great physical stimulus. It seemed to him that he was taller, and he was certainly heavier. Wishing to profit to the utmost, and, having a natural neatness, he looked after himself with great care, bathing inside the reefs once every day, and, whether there was work to be done or not, taking plenty of exercise.

He lost count of the days, but he knew that he was far into the autumn, that in truth winter must have come in his own and distant north. That thought at times was almost maddening. Doubtless the snow was already falling on the peaks that had seen so many gallant exploits by his comrades and himself, and on George and Champlain, the lakes so beautiful and majestic under any aspect. Those were the regions he loved. When would he see them again? But such thoughts, too, he crushed and saw only the ship that was to take him back to his own.

Some change in the weather came, and he was aware that the winter of the south was at hand. Yet it was not cold. There was merely a fresh sparkle in the air, a new touch of crispness. Low, gray skies were a relief, after so much blazing sunshine, and the cool winds whipped his blood to new life. The house had a fireplace and chimney and often he built a low fire, not so much for the sake of warmth as for the cheer that the sparkling blaze gave. Then he could imagine that he was back in his beloved province of New York. Now the snow was certainly pouring down there. The lofty peaks were hidden in clouds of white, and the ice was forming around the edges of Andiatarocte and Oneadatote. Perhaps Willet and Tayoga were scouting in the snowy forests, but they must often hang over the blazing fires, too.

The coldness without, the blaze on the hearth, and the warmth within increased his taste for reading and his comprehension seemed to grow also. He found new meanings in the classics and he became saturated also with style. His were the gifts of an orator, and it was often said in after years, when he became truly great, that his speech, in words, in metaphor and in illustration followed, or at least were influenced, by the best models. Some people found in him traces of Shakespeare, the lofty imagery and poetry and the deep and wide knowledge of human emotions, of life itself. Others detected the mighty surge of Homer, or the flow of Virgil, and a few discerning minds found the wit shown in the comedies of the Restoration, from which he had unconsciously plucked the good, leaving the bad.

It is but a truth to say that every day he lived in these days he lived a week or maybe a month. The stillness, the utter absence of his kind, drove his mind inward with extraordinary force. He gained a breadth of vision and a power of penetration of which he had not dreamed. He acquired toleration, too. Looking over the recent events in his perilous life, he failed to find hate for anybody. Perhaps untoward events had turned the slaver into his evil career, and at the last he had shown some good. The French were surely fighting for what they thought was their own, and they struck in order that they might not be struck. Tandakora himself was the creature of his circumstances. He hated the people of the English colonies, because they were spreading over the land and driving away the game. He was cruel because it was the Ojibway nature to be cruel. He would have to fight Tandakora, but it was because conditions had made it necessary.